In Part I are all the major natural calamities – floods, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, plague and famine. Part II describes in vivid detail the greatest man-made disasters war and invasion, persecution and massacre, riots and terrorism, explosions and fires, shipwrecks and air crashes.

Tune into the news today, and one would think that human beings were at risk of being wiped from the face of the earth—by tsunamis, earthquakes, swine flu, or terrorism. One could be forgiven for thinking that we are in far more danger today than ever before. The fact of the matter is that danger has always stalked mankind. From ancient volcanoes and floods to the cholera and small pox, to Hitler and Stalin’s genocidal murders during the twentieth century, our continued existence has always seemed perilous.

Out of our horror comes an epic journal through the history of disaster. Disaster! offers perspective on today’s fears by revealing how dangerous our world has always been. Natural disasters and man-made catastrophes mark every era. Here is the Black Death that killed seventy-five million in Europe and Asia during the 1300s; the 1883 volcanic eruption on Krakatoa; the Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century; the Nazi Holocaust; the 1970 storm in Bangladesh, now considered the deadliest in history; and more. Train crashes, air disasters, and shipwrecks litter human history.